WTA Madrid: Zheng Qinwen lost to Potapova and missed the clay season

26/04/2025 13:34:00 pandatv

On April 25, local time, the 2025 WTA1000 Madrid station continued the second round of the women's singles competition. China's first official clay match since the Paris Olympics took 100 minutes before she lost 4-6, 4-6 to her old rival Potapova.

Zheng Qinwen's form has been up and down this season, and after reaching the quarterfinals at the WTA Charleston station, she chose to withdraw from the WTA Stuttgart tournament and directly prepare for two WTA1000-level clay tournaments. Zheng Qinwen faced Potapova in the first round across the net, and the two players have faced each other four times before, and although Zheng Qinwen has the upper hand in the head-to-head record with 3 wins and 1 loss, each victory has not come easily.

Zheng Qinwen

Photo: Visual China

Zheng didn't play well throughout the game, hitting just 13 winning points and making a whopping 30 unforced errors, with a first-serve success rate of just 44% and a first-serve winning rate of only 56% in key service links. Although Zheng Qinwen broke serve several times in the two sets, and once took a 4-2 lead in the second set, he was finally picked out by Potapova.

Madrid is not a blessed place for Zheng, as this is the fourth time in her career that she has appeared in the WTA Women's Singles main draw in Madrid, winning just one of her four appearances (beating McNally in the first round in 2023). So far, the three Chinese mainland players who participated in the singles competition in Madrid this year have all been eliminated, Zheng Qinwen, Wang Xinyu and Buyun Chaoket have not tasted a victory; In the women's doubles, Wang Xinyu/Zheng Saisai lost 4-6/2-6 to Maya/Sigmund, and only Xu Yifan remained in the draw table.

After the game, Zheng Qinwen summed up the game: "Today's loss is mainly due to the fact that some choices on the court were not done well, especially I feel that I need to be more patient on clay, but when I go up to attack, I need to be more decisive, and today I have not found a sense of balance between attacking and defending. ”

Zheng Qinwen also admitted that he did not do well in some key points today, did not grasp the good timing, made too many mistakes at the beginning of the game, and did not play offensive when he was ahead. "Including in the match, I haven't had a good serve, and the form of the serve today is really sluggish."

At the same time, Zheng Qinwen believes that the defeat was not caused by injuries or other single factors, and the injuries have not affected her now. For the next matches of the clay season, Zheng Qinwen said that he needs to fight one game at a time, and he still needs to find the feeling of playing on clay.